Comparing apples and oranges

[Jarrett Billingsley]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Denis Koroskin <2korden at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I believe Java and C# took bool Object.equals(Object other); way because
> they lacked generics intially and stored all the instances as Objects in
> containers (having equals method in Object allowed them proper ordering
> etc).
>
> D doesn't suffer from that problem and doesn't have to follow the same way
> those languages took.

I agree, opEquals and opCmp in Object feel like out-of-date relics.
It's particularly annoying how, if you want your classes to behave
with arrays/AAs, you must override opEquals(Object), meaning you have
to do silly downcasts at runtime.

> BTW, nowadays, they define IComparable<T> interface, which is a recommended
> way to implement comparison functions.

I think D, with its much better generic support, could basically use
duck typing and achieve the same effects without the penalty of an
interface.